Computer Terms In Plain English

What is RAM, What is a Hard Drive: A Plain English Explanation

When it comes to a computer, there are so many computer terms like RAM, megahertz, gigabytes, etc. that people can find confusing. Having a better understanding of some of these terms can help you feel more comfortable using your computer, and ultimately get more out of it.

A lot of people I talk to seem to be apologetic about their lack of knowledge. It's too bad people feel that way; they really shouldn't. What I tell them is that while they may not know as much as I do about computers, there's nothing wrong with that, and they probably know a lot of other things I don't know much about.

All you need is someone who takes the time to explain things to you in a way that makes sense.

One term many people confuse is memory or RAM, and hard drive storage space. RAM stands for Random Access Memory (don't worry, you don't need to remember that!).

It is a temporary working space the computer uses to get work done, which gets emptied when the computer is turned off.

Think of it like a work bench or table. You have a project you're working on and you do your project on the bench and when you're done, you clear it off.

The hard drive is the main place your computer uses to store information. It looks like a rectangular metal box which contains a non-removable disk (as opposed to something like a CD Drive where you can take the disk out).

It is the disk inside the drive which stores everything on your computer -- every picture, every music file, every email, and every Word document. Not only that, but Windows or Mac OS X, the operating system that makes the computer run.

To continue our analogy, think of it as a set of shelves where you store the tools or materials for your project -- when you want to work on something you choose the things you need from the shelves, put them on the bench and work on the project.

This is like when you run a program; the computer loads the program from the hard drive into memory (the temporary working space).

So the larger the shelves, the more you can store -- i.e. the more programs you can have installed, the more songs or pictures or videos you can save on your computer.

Most people with a computer made in the last few years have far larger hard drives than they'll ever use. Few people ever fill them up, unless they are keeping a lot of large files such as sound files or pictures, or especially video files.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. If that's true, video is worth at least a million words, and the files can be that much bigger!

If someone tells you you need more memory, or your computer gives you an error message about being low on memory, this usually means you don't have enough RAM. This can slow your computer down drastically.

Think of the bench idea again: if your bench is very small, you can't fit everything you need on it to get your work done, so you're constantly wasting time moving one piece of the project off the bench to make room for the next piece... if you can really work at all.

Both RAM and hard drive space are measured with the same terms: bytes, kilobytes (KB), megabytes (MB), gigabytes (GB), with newer drives even being measured in terabytes (TB). Since both RAM and hard drives are measured in the same way, this may be one reason people confuse the two terms.

You don't need to understand exactly what those computer terms mean, but understand that each one is basically a thousand times larger than the one before. So a kilobyte is 1,000 times larger than a byte, a megabyte is 1,000 times larger than a kilobyte, a gigabyte is a thousand times later than that, and so on.

The reason you buy a computer one year that has a lot of RAM, and two or three years go by and suddenly someone tells you you don't have enough memory, is because each year the average size of programs, and the amount of memory they need, gets larger.

It's as if the tools you use on your workbench keep growing every year so you eventually have to get a larger bench.

If your computer seems to be running more slowly recently, or you've been having odd errors, it could be that you need to upgrade your memory. This isn't always the source of these problems, but RAM is very inexpensive these days and adding to what your computer has can add life to your Mac or PC.

Hopefully this clears up the meaning of these basic computer terms for you, and made a lot more sense than it used to!

Understanding the Computer Term: A Driver

In this issue of my computer tips newsletter, I'm going to explain a computer term that, like so many computer terms, isn't very well understood by most people. And in many cases, isn't understood at all.

Of course, as always, remember that's not a criticism -- if you didn't understand what a driver was before this, it's just because it was never explained to you the right way before.

Let's see what I can do to fix that.

A driver is a special type of software that's needed to get different pieces of hardware to work right with your computer.

Didn't make sense yet? Bear with me.

First off, just to make sure we're all on the same page, let me briefly explain the difference between the two basic computer terms "hardware" and "software".

It's actually pretty simple -- "hardware" refers to all of the physical pieces of equipment, like your mouse, your computer's screen (or monitor), the hard drive, etc.

"Software" is all of the parts of the computer that you can't really see or touch. Software would include things like Microsoft Word, your email program, Windows or the Mac OS, plus all of your personal files like letters, photos, music, and more.

One way to think about it is like this: hardware is like your brain, the physical part of your body, while software is like your mind or your thoughts -- the non-physical part of yourself.

Software runs on hardware, just like your thoughts "run on" your brain.

Make sense?

Now let's talk more specifically about drivers. Here's the easy way to think about the computer term driver:

Imagine that every piece of hardware, including your printer, your mouse, and so on, speaks a different language. So one speaks French, another one speaks Italian, another one Cantonese, and so on.

So when you plug in a new printer and turns it on, your computer says "hi" and the printer answers in a foreign language the computer doesn't understand.

So it needs an interpreter.

And when I say interpreter, I mean just like in the real world, like if a foreign diplomat comes to the country but doesn't speak the local language. They need an interpreter to help them communicate with the locals.

That, basically speaking, is what a driver is -- an interpreter that helps your computer talk to a specific piece of equipment. And you need a different interpreter for each piece of equipment (or each general type) that you hook up to the computer.

Make sense?

Now in some cases, the driver may be "preinstalled" on your computer (in other words, the computer already has the interpreter ready and waiting in case it's needed) and in other cases, it needs to either be installed from a CD, or downloaded off the Internet, and then installed on the computer.

But either way, the computer needs that driver before it can talk to the printer or whatever other type of device you may have hooked up to the computer.

Hope that makes sense.

Until next time, enjoy,

Worth Godwin

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What is an operating system? In this article I'm going to help you finally make sense of what for most people is one of the most confusing and least understood computer terms around: "operating system", or "OS".

This is actually a pretty easy idea to get when it's explained right.

Now what is an operating system, or OS? First off, it's is a type of software. To recap my explanation from my last newsletter article:

"Software" is all of the parts of the computer that you can't really see or touch. Software would include things like Microsoft Word, your email program, Windows or the Mac OS, plus all of your personal files like letters, photos, music, and more.

One way to think about it is like this: hardware is like your brain, the physical part of your body, while software is like your mind or your thoughts -- the non-physical part of yourself.

Software runs on hardware, just like your thoughts "run on" your brain.

Make sense? So let's get to the OS specifically.

First off, let me give a couple of examples: the two best known operating systems right now are Windows, and Mac OS X (pronounced "Oh Ess Ten" -- as in the Roman numeral ten).

Windows XP and Windows Vista are a couple different versions of the Windows operating system. While Mac OS 10.4 (also called "Tiger") and the newest Mac OS 10.5 (or "Leopard") are two different versions of Mac OS X.

So what *is* an OS?

Think of it this way: when a baby is born, they have the instinct to eat, breathe, and so on, and also the instinct to watch, listen, and absorb what's going on around them.

In time, a young child learns to talk and walk by learning from others, and as they get older, they also learn more fundamental skills like reading and writing, hand-eye coordination, and so on.

So in other words, they go from being able to do not a lot except eat, sleep, and fill diapers, to physical and mental maturity where they have all the general skills they need to learn more specific skills like driving a car, playing a sport like football, writing a paper for school, working a job, etc.

In many ways, when you turn a computer on, it's just like a newborn baby. It has the ability to turn on, and show an image on the screen, but that's about it.

The only other thing it can do is look at the hard drive, and if there is an operating system installed on it, the computer knows to start running the OS.

That process is called "booting", which is what happens between when you turn the computer on, and when you can actually start using it.

And the best way to think about it is that it's just like a child being born and growing up: the operating system contains the "life experiences" and lessons that give a child all the basic skills like walking, talking, reading, writing, and so on, that make everything else possible.

So in a sense, it's like your computer is born and "grows up" in the space of 30 seconds to a minute or so (or longer for some computers) that it takes to "boot" the operating system.

So in other words, the operating system is like those basic skills we all have and learned as children. More specifically, it's the software on the computer that creates the desktop, the icons on it, moves the little mouse pointer around on the screen when you move your mouse around, lets you view files and open, lets you type, and so on.

Without it, you couldn't do anything with the computer but turn it on and see an error message like "non system disk or disk error" on a Windows PC, or a flashing question mark on a Mac.

So even though a lot of people don't really understand what an OS is, or what it does, you couldn't use your computer without it.

Hope that makes sense, and helps answer the question "What is an OS?".

Until next time, enjoy,

Worth Godwin